Demonstration in Leadership

IP Clinic Interim Director Valerie Barreiro brings international background, courtroom skills and industry experience to the table

-By Christina Schweighofer

Valerie Barreiro has prosecuted, defended and negotiated. She has worked as in-house counsel and hammered out agreements with talent agents, producers and executives. And in her new appointment, as a professor at the USC Gould School of Law, she is passing on what she has learned in her many pivots: that the success of a lawyer depends on much more than a solid foundation in substantive law; that it also requires skills and well-developed leadership.

Barreiro, who is the Interim Director for the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic (“IP Clinic”), came to USC from NBCUniversal, where she was a Business Affairs executive and Vice President ofLegal Affairs. Working on unscripted TV shows like “The Voice,” she negotiated the terms of agreements with producers, reviewed contracts and vetted episodes to ensure the content would hold up to legal scrutiny. The role required a deep understanding of the applicable laws, but Barreiro also had to use her communication skills to facilitate teamwork.

Student Focus: As head of the IP Clinic, Valerie Barreiro (left) puts a premium on teaching leadership skills

In the IP Clinic, which offers pro bono intellectual property legal assistance to filmmakers, artists, innovators and entrepreneurs, students hone exactly those skills. As they counsel clients on the registration of trademarks and assist them with work-for-hire agreements, terms of use and end user license agreements, they develop their listening skills and learn how to build trust. They become more adept at explaining legal concepts in a succinct way and at convincing or persuading people.

“Take any trademark case,” Barreiro says. “To inform clients that they are unable to register the trademark they want, students must first understand the legal principles and the client’s business, and then provide advice that mitigates the legal risk while still addressing the needs of the business. And they have to ask themselves how they can best communicate to clients that they have to do something differently.”

Barreiro’s ease with people grew in part out of her international background: by the time she graduated from high school, she had lived in Argentina, Panama, New York and California. Bilingual in Spanish and English, and highly attuned to cultural differences, she had picked up an appreciation for each person’s individuality, a deep-seated respect for everyone’s dignity.

In her career Barreiro found plenty of opportunities to further sharpen her communication skills. “Learning to persuade 12 jurors on your feet prepares you to deal with a variety of clients,” she says, looking back on her years as a prosecutor for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office and as an attorney litigating IP cases for a law firm in L.A. 

Goal-oriented and a doer, Barreiro has always thrived on finding practical solutions to clients’ needs, and she is excited that her work for the IP Clinic ultimately serves those who lack access to legal representation. But with her main focus now on the students, she has formulated a new goal for herself: to prepare those students for the real-world challenges of their future careers by educating them in the applications of case law and helping them hone their skills with clients.

If that sounds like she is only about knowledge and skills — not quite. Barreiro’s mission goes further. She wants her students to under-stand that legal work is about making choices and, that, as lawyers, they will have to define for themselves what their values are if they want to convey those values to their clients with authority.

What Barreiro tells her students is: “You are in a position of power. You are impacting other people’s lives.” What she tells herself sounds similar. “As a law professor,” she says, “I have a responsibility: to teach students to lead.”